A year ago today, I left Fenton, Missouri and headed back to Minneapolis, Minnesota. A month previously, I had officially graduated from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities with a B.S. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. I had meagerly started the job search in October 2016. After haphazardly throwing my resume, transcripts, and a generic cover letter at about 20 jobs I found by searching “environmental science” in the USA Jobs portal, I continued and finished my studies and student job as a student development representative at the University of Minnesota foundation. Mentally beaten, bruised, and bashed; I drove home to celebrate the holidays with the family. On that drive, I had to deal with snow, ice, sleet, freezing rain, and a downpour. My original route was only supposed to take 8 hours, but wanting to stick to major thoroughfares in case something happened turned it into a 12-hour journey. Finally, I arrived home, exhausted and looking forward to some rest and relaxation.
***
Graduating in December is extremely lackluster. There’s no fanfare, pomp, circumstance, or hoorahs. In fact, the only public recognition that I personally received was a blessing for the December graduates that was given at mass. I was fine with the low-key graduation. I worked hard through college and got mediocre results. I was not exceptional, and I wasn’t horrible (most of the time). Don’t get me wrong, I loved 99% of my classes. I loved the academic environment. I loved staying up late studying, writing a paper, and doing homework. But, sometimes that didn’t give me the result that I wanted. Even through all the hardships, I never stopped loving the material. I had to retake Chemistry 1 and 2, yet I still was fascinated by how it worked. Learning about soils and atmospheric sciences consistently reminded me how important our natural resources are. The professors were incredible. The passion my teachers had for both education and the subject matter greatly excited me. Even though I finished with a mediocre academic track record, I feel that my academic experience was truly one of a kind.
***
My 2016-2017 holiday season was not ideal. Post-grad life was not the barrage of job offers and opportunities that I had envisioned throughout my college career. I learned quickly that the last two weeks of December and the first two weeks of January are extremely unproductive in the job hunting world. Unfortunately, this is also one of the most popular times for businesses and agencies to post their open positions. I applied to roughly 10 jobs in the weeks after the new year. The lack of responses coupled with the lack of knowledge of opportunities set the tone of my job search. Add a family tragedy, sprinkle in some intense arguments, and include a whole cup of self doubt and I had a recipe for personal fulfillment. Just kidding. Those factors caused me to question my life, love, and what I was pursuing. Was I looking for happiness? Was I looking for stability? Was I looking for peace of mind? I had no idea. During that third week of January, I knew whatever I was looking for and I wasn’t going to find it in Fenton. I needed to go back to Minnesota. Luckily I had signed a 12 month lease for my apartment, so I packed up my suitcase and headed back to the land of 10,000 lakes and with the hope of environmental opportunities.
When I got back to Minneapolis, my first objective was to land a part time job. My apartment cost $515 a month and I only had four months saved. Living within walking distance of campus, I did a daily walk through of Dinkytown and Stadium Village looking for the coveted “help wanted” sign. Unfortunately, nothing was posted that first week, or the following week, or the week after that. The dreaded “Oh shit” feeling that I had only experienced a handful of times before had started to take over whatever part of the brain is responsible for “hope”. I had also applied to a dozen or so full time jobs at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency by the end of January.
***
My first true job was at 17 when I decided to work summer camp staff at camp Famous Eagle at S-F Scout Ranch. For nine weeks out of the year I lived in a raised tent that somehow had electricity, worked 14-hour days with 36 other guys ranging from 15 to 25, and loved every second of it. I worked a total of four summers, teaching rowing and archery my for my first and second year and was the nature director for my third and fourth, which coincided with the summer of my freshman and sophomore year of college. While the nature director, I taught astronomy. It was a subject that I was previously unfamiliar with, but I learned to love it and it still interests me to this day. I was able to use my second stint as nature director as an internship. I was able to branch out and really make the position mine. I was able to educate people on water quality, soil health, climate change, human impact on the environment, and other subjects that I was passionate about. I learned so much during those summers and the people I worked with became my second family.
Throughout my college career, I was always working. The first week of school, I interviewed and accepted a job with the University of Minnesota Foundation as a student development representative, which is a fancy title for “tele-fundraiser”. I would call alumni and ask for donations. I figured I’d stay with them for a year before moving on to bigger and better things. Unfortunately, I fell in love with the job. I looked forward to coming in and learning something new about the university and the people I worked with. My freshman year, I kept my head down and did my work, not really talking to anybody except my supervisors. Everything changed my sophomore year. I was promoted to lead caller, meaning I worked with my supervisor in helping my team of student callers. I was forced to be social and I came out of my shell and never looked back. I talked to everyone and personally made it my goal to make a job that was full of rejection enjoyable. I wanted to make people laugh, feel welcomed, and take their mind off a call that didn’t go so well. There were ups and downs and even some disagreements between myself and my supervisors, but I wouldn’t trade the time I spent there for the world.
The summer between senior year 1.0 and senior year 1.5 I had the opportunity to work with the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board as an Aquatic Invasive Species Educator and Boat Inspector. From May to September, I would sit in a chair for eight and a half hours a day by boat launch waiting for people to put in or take out their boats. I got to experience firsthand how water has a direct impact on Minnesotan culture. I learned about how the state of Minnesota was dealing with invasives such as zebra mussels, spiny water flea, and Eurasian Milfoil. While it may seem idyllic, the job was not without its drawbacks (as with any job). The two main shifts went from 5:45 AM to 2 PM and 1:45 PM to 10 PM. When I got hired, I told my boss that I could work either shift. This was not a good idea. My sleep schedule was erratic. There were days where I would be awake for 26 hours and days I would sleep for 14. The job was lonely as well. Morning shifts you worked with no one and in the evening a second inspector would come from 8 to 10. To pass the time, I would read, do crosswords, get rid of washed up milfoil, and daydream. I lived for busy days. I enjoyed working the holidays and the hot summer days. At the end of my internship, I came out with a wealth of knowledge about not only invasive species and customer service, but also about myself. I did not want to sit for eight hours a day. I wanted to work with my hands and continually challenging myself.
***
Being broke and unemployed made my life extremely boring. Before I left for Minnesota, my Dad told me that “job searching is a job within itself”. I can confidently tell you that that is complete horseshit. I would wake up at 7:30 AM every morning and check my email and job boards to see if there were any updates to jobs I had applied to. I would then cycle through the companies to see if any new positions had become available. I would find at least five new companies that were relevant to my interests and see if they had any openings. This took approximately between two and three hours. Mix that with my daily stroll through Dinkytown, Stadium Village, and looking for part time work, I would spend a total of three and a half to four and a half hours looking for a job. To fill the rest of the day, I would watch Netflix, listen to music, play Rocket League with a friend in Missouri, and go to church. I figured that going to church every day would give me a reason to put on pants and bring me some good karma. At daily mass, I listened, read, and prayed for guidance. I needed a sign that I wasn’t a worthless piece of shit and that things were going to improve. I got nothing. But, I still kept going. Church was the only place where I could interact with other people and have a conversation. I had reached out to some of my other Minnesotan friends, but only two were responsive. It was a rough February, March, and April.
***
I had first gotten into stand-up comedy when I was a freshman in high school when my dad burned a CD of Bill Cosby’s greatest hits for us while driving to a lake to fish. Then, my senior year of high school I created a comedy Pandora station to listen to more. There, I got to hear the likes of John Mulaney, Jim Gaffigan, Frank Caliendo, and Mike Birbiglia for the first time. The cool thing about Pandora was that it gave me the opportunity to listen to many different comics and hear how different people interpret life. In college, when I wasn’t listening to music, I was listening to comedy. Dan Cummins, Tom Segura, Chad Daniels, Nick Swardson, Christina P, and Kyle Kinane became my new favorites. But, the one thing that all of these comics have is the power of perspective. I’ve heard hilarious takes on the support and opposition of sex, drugs, politics, and everything in between. I learned to not take any situation too seriously. Kyle Kinane says “comedy is just tragedy plus time”, so I look forward to the day where I can joke about the shitshow that was 2017 for me.
***
In mid March, I got my first call for an interview. It was for environmental technician job with a consulting firm. I would be doing invasive species removal and environmental remediation at different sites throughout Minnesota. I got asked for an in person interview a week later. With high hopes, I arrived and crushed the interview. I went hope and waited. A week went by. Two weeks went by. I emailed the person I had interviewed with and asked some more question s about the job. The next day I got a response saying that I was no longer being considered for the job. To get from the phone interview to getting a formal rejection took 37 days. As of today (2/20/18) I still have not heard from ~30 companies that I had applied to.
***
Rejection is a part of life. For four and a half years I was rejected by alumni when I asked for donations. I got my little heart broken when I told my fifth grade crush how I felt. I got rejected when I was 16 for applying at a local deli. The only time I haven’t gotten rejected was when I was applying to colleges. I applied to Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Mizzou, and the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Minnesota was my reach school. I had fallen in love when I visited it in the summer and reaffirmed it when I did a second visit in October. I turned down scholarships from the other two schools to learn from some of the best professors in the world. Every day during my college career, I looked around and thought “I can’t believe I’m here”. But, when I graduated and couldn’t find a job, I began to think back about my decision and was extremely mad at the University and my specific college for not putting enough emphasis on finding post graduate employment. I looked at the Carlson School of Management and saw all my friends getting job offers up to a year in advance. I felt abandoned. I was chewed up and spit out and left with a 10 year loan and no job.
***
April and May were interesting. I had sent out my 100th application on April 28th. Out of 100 applications, I had interviews for 3 and called back for 1. I stopped keeping track at that point. I was still going to church, but I any faith I had in myself was gone. I got tired of encouragement from my parents. The clichés were way too much (see an explanation of that in a previous post) and the conversations I had them drove me insane. Family came in for graduation, but I didn’t want them to. Why celebrate me graduating when I had nothing to show for it? While walking them around campus, I got a call from the St. Louis County Department of Health asking if I’d accept the part time Vector Control Assistant job. At that moment, I wanted to say no. To me, the world was playing a sick, twisted joke on me. I could hear my parents thinking “he probably gets calls like this all the time”. For the past five months, I had envisioned that I would get the call telling me I was hired full time, whether that was in Minnesota or anywhere but Missouri. Obviously, I didn’t let that show or verbalize any of that. I had moved up to Minnesota at 18 and fallen in love with everything about it, and now the universe shat me out and sent me back to Missouri. That night, I called my St. Louis friends and told them my dilemma. They convinced me to come back. So, two weeks later, flat broke and my credit card maxed out, I headed back to Fenton.
***
I love being busy. I love deadlines, late nights, early mornings, and shitty coffee. There’s something very therapeutic about being up against a wall with a project due date. For example, I’ve been writing this post on and off for the last month, but right now it’s 7:55 PM on January 20th. I’ve been writing since 4 PM and have been jamming out to my house, soft rock, and rap Pandora stations and this is the happiest I’ve been since the first week of January when I was scrambling to get the last minute signatures and commitments for a grant I was preparing. Being unemployed was my personal hell. For the first time in my adult life, I had nothing to do. I had too much free time. I remember texting my friend and telling her that I was doing chemistry problems to keep from being bored. I got information from Wal-Mart on watch repair when a buddy of mine had issues with his watch. The need to be a productive member of society was strong. Even eight months later, where I am employed, that fear of not being productive lives on. Honestly, this feeling is one I never want to go away. If I am not moving forward and improving myself, others, and/or the world around me, then I have lost sight of my convictions and purpose.
***
I was not happy to be home. I felt like I had gone backwards. I leave at 18, spend four and a half years in Minnesota, and come back. In the story that plays out in my mind, I graduate, get a solid entry level job, meet a girl, fall in love, get promoted or move to a mid-level job, get married, have kids, get promoted again, volunteer, go on vacations, never retire, and die knowing I made a difference. Living at home was never part of my plan. That first night, as I was angrily unpacking, my dad popped in and said “what’s wrong”? I said “I don’t want to be here”, but in a voice that hid tears. I texted my friend in Minnesota asking why I was freaking out and he simply replied that this happens when your life changes so drastically. It was a tough pill to swallow. Living at home, under supervision, and not being able to be myself caused me to build up a lot of resentment toward myself and the people close to me.
***
I’ve always struggled to define happiness. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve felt a lot of happiness throughout my 24 years on this Earth. Whether it being drunkenly singing along to “Don’t Stop Believin’” with my friends in a crowded bar, passing chemistry, feeling appreciated by others, or doing a good turn, those moments are great. But, actually knowing deep inside what makes me happy is harder to understand. Everyone has heard the phrase that money doesn’t buy happiness. I agree, kind of. Money buys peace of mind. Not having to worry if you’re going make rent, pay for food, or can afford a trip to the hospital is a huge weight off of anyone’s shoulders. I feel if you have peace of mind, you are close to happiness. Laughing is a sign of happiness. In the dark days of unemployment, I would listen to stand up comedy to brighten my day and make sure I could still feel. Those stand up bits gave me the strength to keep fighting the ruthless job system day after day. I thought having a job would make me happy, but I don’t think happy is the right word. Having a job motivates me. It gets me out of bed, makes me want to do good work, and gives me a sense of purpose. Being around friends is great. Other people are the best part of life, but is being around others allow me to define happiness? I don’t know. But, when you combine other people, peace of mind, and motivation, my outlook on life is brighter. I don’t know if it’s happiness, but it feels pretty damn good.
***
Summer was rough. I was around friends again and I was working, but I still felt unfulfilled. I had a co-worker that was in a similar situation, so it was nice to talk to each other and vent our frustrations. Work was very monotonous. Monday through Friday, I would arrive at work at 7 AM and take out a county truck and throw larvacide (a chemical mix that killed mosquito larvae) into creeks and easements for eight hours. I was glad that I got to see parts of St. Louis County that I had never seen. I was thrilled to not be sitting behind a desk and had the opportunity to get some exercise while working. But, I still was looking for full time employment. Being back at home meant I had people looking over my shoulder constantly. Every day, my parents would ask “what jobs have you applied for”. I couldn’t watch or listen to my stand up comedy without headphones because it was deemed “too inappropriate”. I longed to be back on my own and doing my own thing. After sending out more applications, I got the opportunity to interview for the Minnesota GreenCorps. I did a phone interview on the 20th of June and was hired as an Energy Conservation member for the 2017/2018 program year three weeks later. I was heading back to Minnesota. I was truly elated. For the first time in seven months, I felt happy about my current disposition.
***
The butterfly effect has always fascinated me. The butterfly effect is a concept that “small causes can have larger effects”. A great example of this is the 2017 NFC title game. Long story short: two backup quarterbacks playing on the St. Louis Rams in 2015 are now the starting quarterbacks of the two teams vying for a chance to play in the Super Bowl due to trades, injuries, and prophetic offensive coordinator. For me, I (think) I can trace my current situation to one event in the fall of my freshman year of college. I pulled my first all nighter of my life the Sunday night after homecoming, which also was the day before my first college exam, which was chemistry. I figured I could get away with it because my exam was at 7 pm the next day. Monday morning came. I went to my morning classes. At 3 pm, I went back to my dorm and took a nap. I set 3 alarms to go off between 4:45 and 5:15. To be extra careful, I asked my friend to wake me up if my alarms failed to go off. It was a foolproof plan. But, if you’ve ever talked to me, you know what comes next. I sleep through all my alarms, my friend falls asleep, and the next thing I know, my roommate walks into the dorm at 8:15 pm and asks how my exam went. Now that the catalyst has been explained, let’s switch to bullet points.
- I use my one time drop on Intro to Chemistry. I take it the second semester of my freshman year.
- Introduction to chemistry takes the place of Basic Soil Science.
- I take Chemistry 1 the first semester of my sophomore year. It doesn’t go well, but the lab portion does. My confidence in chemistry starts to waiver.
- I retake Chemistry 1 second semester. It doesn’t go well, but it goes better the first time. I busted my ass for the grade I got, so I was just excited to move on the Chemistry 2.
- I take Chemistry 2 and Physics 1 the first semester of my first semester of my Junior year. I also start applying for internships that get me out in the field. I don’t do well in both chemistry and physics.
- I send an email to my adviser to ask permission to retake Chemistry 2 and physics. I learn that I should have not gotten in to chemistry 2 due to my low grade the second time. I also learn that physics won’t fit into my schedule for second semester. Both would have to be taken in the summer.
- The summer between my Junior and Senior year I take chemistry 1 at a local community college and physics at the University. I work the at the University of Minnesota Foundation instead of an internship in my field due to my class scheduling. I pass both.
- The first semester of my Senior year I retake chemistry 2 and pass.
- I switch focuses in my major from atmospheric sciences to earth sciences to avoid another level of chemistry. I finally face the fact that I will have to go an extra semester.
- Second semester of my Senior year I take Basic Soil Science and an erosion control course. I fall in love with the subject matter, mainly because of the enthusiasm of the basic soils professor. He had gotten his Phd and start teaching in 2014. I have my best semester yet. I also get an internship with the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation department as a boat inspector and aquatic invasive species educator.
- After the internship finishes, I decide that even though I enjoy environmental education, the data collection, analysis, and fieldwork is my calling.
- Third semester of my Senior year goes off without a hitch. Classes are tough, but enjoyable. I enjoy the subject matter and get solid career advice from professors and guest lecturers.
Back to normal formatting and my story. As you can see, the “what if” factor is extremely prevalent when I look back on my college career. If I had not overslept, would I have done well on the exam? Would my confidence not have been rocked by an early failure? Would I have found a passion for soils if I had taken the soils course in 2013 rather than 2016? I don’t know.
Doing research for this section was interesting. The butterfly effect initially was not to explain our personal decisions, but was to help determine the predictability of tornadoes. The butterfly metaphor has been criticized due to the idea that everything happens for a reason. In actuality, nature is chaotic, and some things just happen. It’s a futile attempt to comprehend our existence and impact in the world. So, the answer to my “what if” is maybe, probably, probably not, and somewhere in between.
***
I moved back to Minnesota in the middle of September and started my tenure as the City of Pine City’s GreenCorps member. It’s an hour north of Minneapolis, so I have the opportunity to go into the city on the weekends. I get great experience and I work with some amazing people. The pay isn’t great, so I’ve learned 50 different ways to eat beans and rice. I have a supervisor that is supportive of my work and understands that the GreenCorps is a stepping stone for me. I live in a crappy studio apartment where my neighbor is consistently loud and my thermostat only has the “surface of the sun” setting. My life is far from perfect and I’m still working through a lot of those issues I encountered last year. But, as I look back on the year I have had, I am thankful for what I have. Someone once said that when you truly pursue your dreams “you either achieve them or die trying”. Well, I’m still here. I guess I should keep going.
Environmental Opportunities 